On Monday, I have the students write words 3 times each. Each day we do a different activity and then on Friday we take a test. Traditionally, I would average all of the grades, sometimes weighting the test by counting it as 2 or 3 grades compared to the others. My question is this; If the student gets a 60% on Monday's assignment, but then works hard to learn the words and gets a 100% on Friday's test - what would the 80% average tell me? The child knew the words by Friday - they proved it on the test. So why average in the other grades? Also, now if my daughter does her work and I make her fix mistakes, she will always have 100% on her grades. What value is it to keep track of a bunch of 100%?
Keeping track of lessons learned would make better sense, though I personally do not see any reason to report what my daughter learns to anyone. Last time I checked, my husband and I still have custody of our daughter and the State does not, so why do they need to keep track of her learning?? I am thankful that we live in the only state where we have a constitutional right (written in our state's constitution) to homeschool our children.
Having said that, however, I realize some parents do not use the same philosophy and want to keep track of their child's grades (also in high school, some programs require it). So here is a word document which can give you an idea of how to create your own records for your child. Feel free to use it and change it as you need for your family - just don't sell it. :)
Who knew it was so hard to upload a Word document??!! Sorry about that. I had to make it a pdf file, but you may still use it.
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